CES 2018: Ditch the cherries and go for the big idea

Media agencies need to free themselves from the fallacy that technology by itself = impact, writes the7stars’ Simon Harwood

What happens in Vegas is meant to stay in Vegas. But as the dust settles on four days of gadget-based excitement at CES, there’s a sense that the technology showcased across 2.5 million square feet of exhibition space in the Mojave Desert will eventually have an impact on a global scale.

What CES gives us is a glimpse into the near future through the prism of technologies that are slowly beginning to embed themselves into consumers’ lives. The excitement around all this new stuff has fuelled plenty of speculation around whether 2018 goes down as the year that voice comes of age, the year that AR goes mainstream or the year when the robots finally takeover.

And agencies are right to be excited. When Marshall McLuhan said ‘the medium is the message’, he thought of a medium in the broadest sense: anything from which a change emerges; a vessel igniting a symbiotic relationship between context and content. The adoption of new technologies, therefore, brings with it new contexts and new possibilities – new vehicles for communication.

But although some technologies are maturing rapidly and shifting consumption behaviours into ever-newer territory, we need to remember to take a moment before jumping in.

Because of its rising profile, and the fact it remains slightly separated from the media industry, tech has also emerged as a distracting problem for agencies. In an effort to bridge the gap between these worlds, the temptation is to rush to add shiny, new technologies to an ever-expanding mix of channels.

In this context, technologies can become regarded as cherries, used to adorn the top of otherwise uninspired plans and sold as new channels to market. Worse, they are treated as ideas in their own right, as if people will flock to them by dint of their novelty alone or, even more cynically, they are used as evidence of ‘innovation’ when awards season comes round.

Only these technologies aren’t the same as channels or ideas – they’re interfaces. They represent another means of interacting with consumers across channels but they don’t necessarily bring together content and context into a fully coherent environment that follows McLuhan’s model.
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I’d argue that mobile, on-demand, live-streaming, AR, voice, visual search, facial recognition, gesture control, VR, messenger bots (!) are not environment-based verticals with their own unique behaviours. Neither are they communication ideas in themselves. But they are reaching into more and more of the ‘traditional’ channels to open up new possibilities.

As such, media agencies need to stop considering them as cherries and either start embedding them deeper throughout the communications plan, or ignore them altogether. This should not be a revelation in 2018, but by adhering to the principle there are implications for the rest of the plan:

– We create interoperable solutions that can talk to each other, creating more depth than can be achieved in a single media channel

– We end up with content that can be interacted with in multiple ways, at shallow or deep levels, at different times and by different people (at a time, location, device and format that is convenient to them)

– We create a more meaningful data trail across platforms

– We move away from idea of media innovation as magic dust

– We start to think seriously about creativity in the channels where the majority of investment goes

Most importantly, by freeing ourselves from the fallacy that technology by itself = impact, we can properly embrace the ever-expanding suite of new interfaces as part of a broad armoury of creative tools to bring to life the big communication ideas that reach across disciplines.

Because big ideas – the ones where message, channel, content and context are firing in perfect unison – can make a real impact among real people. Big ideas grab attention. They make us excited, happy, sad, ready to take action, talk about the brand and make others think ‘I wish I’d thought of that’.

These are the ideas that blur media boundaries entirely and are impossible to ascribe to one box. Experts within each discipline can see the potential, riff off the idea and make it even bigger.

These are the ideas that prevent media agencies giving creative agencies pre-defined formats to fill in. Or creative agencies giving media agencies pre-defined assets to find a home for.

We can then move away from activity that resonates for a handful of people because we’ve treated them as a line on a plan or worked within the constraints of a specific interface.

Prioritising the idea that’s bigger than the sum of its parts and putting it at very heart of every communications plan. A single audacious thought, writ large with ambition and no little blood, sweat and tears to make it truly zing.

That certainly sounds like an exciting future to me. And there’s not a cherry in sight.

Simon Harwood is head of strategy at the7stars